‘The Dog That Saved Christmas’ by Nicola Davies is the touching, diverse and insightful story about Jake, a young boy who struggles with the noises, lights, other people and the lack of routine which comes with the festive period. Christmas is a real nightmare for Jake, until he finds a lost dog and she becomes his trusty companion. The bond that quickly develops between the two of them changes Jake’s views and makes the difficulties he experiences, much more bearable.
Teaching From Text have created this FREE two week long scheme of work, to help you with those final weeks before the Christmas holidays.
This unit contains 10 x 1 hour English lesson plans, differentiated and engaging activities, top teaching tips, hand-drawn images, bespoke teaching videos, ALL resources needed and opportunities for the development of reading, writing, PAG and oral skills – all of which focus on this diverse text.
This two-week English unit of work has been written for Years 5 and 6 (ages 9-11). During this unit the children will have an opportunity to develop their retrieval and inference skills, expand their understanding of figurative language and imagery, create free verse poems, perform poetry, develop their summarising skills, practise editing skills, create a persuasive speech with an understanding of emotive language and participate in a purposeful debate.
This unit of work can be downloaded for free as our Christmas gift to you, allowing you more time for self-care in those final build-up weeks to Christmas.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support this year and to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a restful New Year!
Nicola and Davina
Set in an unnamed country, this is a timely and important book, which illuminates the realities of life as a refugee. The first-person narration simply but powerfully conveys Shif’s terror at the violence and cruelty he encounters, as well as his sense of loss. The horrors he is escaping are all too real, but this is ultimately a story about the power of kindness and the strength of the human spirit.
This six-week English unit of work has been written for Years 5 and 6 (aged 9-11). It contains 30 x 1 hour English lesson plans, which include differentiated, engaging activities and top teaching tips. The scheme includes all the resources you will need ready for you to print off including differentiated activities, success criteria, WAGOLLs (writing models) and word mats.
During the unit many vocabulary and grammar techniques are covered: emotive and figurative language; semicolons, colons and dashes; and cohesive devises. The children will have regular shorter writing tasks such as letter writing from the main character to his little sister, a recount and free verse poetry. The children will also have a longer writing task (a biography of the main character) to embed their grammar learning.
If that wasn’t enough, our scheme includes beautiful hand-drawn images and bespoke teaching videos to engage your children further.
This heart-wrenching and uplifting book will stay with you and your class forever.
*Please note that this is week 1 of the 6-week scheme. The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website. *
Pushkin Children’s Books, author - Ele Fountain, cover designer - Katie Everson
Efua Traoré wrote ‘Children of the Quicksands’: a thrilling adventure story set in Nigeria filled with magic, myths, legends, goddesses, culture, music, courage, pride and friendship.
Teaching From Text absolutely loved writing this six-week scheme of work to accompany Efua Traoré’s book, ‘Children of the Quicksands’. This download is Week 1 from the scheme.
The full six-week scheme of work has followed the DfE’s June 2021 guidance by creating plans and resources which encourage the children to complete shorter writing tasks to allow pupils to focus on sentence structure. Throughout the 30 English lessons, the children will be completely immersed in the rich and challenging text! They will get to know the characters, setting and storyline through grammar activities such as expanded noun phrases; relative clauses; commas, dashes and brackets to indicate parenthesis; modal verbs and adverbs to indicate degrees of possibility and learning about active and passive verbs. Their lessons will be engaging and varied including drama, links to art and a debate.
Alongside shorter writing tasks, the children will apply their grammar skills in a letter from the main character to her mother and a persuasive argument based around an emotive decision in the book.
As with all our schemes of work, our resources are fully differentiated, illustrated with hand-drawn images of the incredible characters, all lesson plans are detailed (but easy to follow) and include bespoke teaching videos using themes and characters from the book to help you teach tricky grammar concepts.
The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website.
Front Cover design by Helen Crawford-White
About this Scheme of Work
This is week 1 of a seven- week scheme of work.
This English seven-week scheme of work has been centred around ‘The Leopard in the Golden Cage’ by Julia Edwards. It is a fantastically engaging text which tells the story of young Joe, who mysteriously time travels back to Roman Britain when he visits the ruins of a Roman Palace! Here, he forms a strong friendship with Lucy – a daughter from an important Roman family who lived in the Palace during Roman times. With Joe travelling back and forth, without control, the story unfolds containing many twists and turns! This 35 x 1 hour English Scheme of Work is written for Year 4. All Learning Intentions come from the National Curriculum for Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation for Lower Key Stage 2.
During this unit, the children have three extended writing tasks:
• Letter Writing
• Non-Chronological Report
• Narrative
Many grammar objectives are also covered throughout the scheme, which have been designed to engage the children as they develop their understanding. These objectives include adverbs or manner and time, fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases, time and cause conjunctions and using and punctuating direct speech.
Furthermore, the scheme also covers many of the Year 4 reading objectives, including inference, summarising, explaining the meaning of words in context, using words that capture a reader’s attention, retrieving and recording non-fiction information, predicting, participating in discussions, and finally, identifying themes across the text.
This scheme will save teachers a whole term of planning and preparation time for English lessons! Every single lesson plan and resource you will need for the whole seven weeks is provided for you. The scheme includes a variety of resources which are all ready to print off and use! This includes differentiated activities, research sheets for the children, posters for the Working Wall, handouts for the children, success criteria checklists and high-quality written examples of the extended writing expectations. And if this wasn’t enough, all of the resource illustrations are hand-drawn, as well as the scheme containing bespoke teaching videos, both of which engage the children.
Julia Edwards offers school visits and Zoom visits from her Scar Gatherer website.
The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website.
About this Scheme of Work.
This download is Week 1 of a 6 week unit of work.
This English six-week scheme of work has been centred around ‘Song of the Dolphin Boy��� by Elizabeth Laird. It tells the story of Finn; he’s a young and lonely boy who struggles to be accepted by his peers. His father does not seem to give him the love and attention he should, and he will not let Finn near the waters where they live. However, he does have some hidden secrets about Finn! The book follows Finn’s journey in trying to make friends and learn his true identity, as well as trying to prevent further plastic pollution in the ocean to protect the dolphins. This scheme includes a clear and thorough understanding of plastic pollution in our oceans; this a current topic which children should be aware of.
This scheme of work links perfectly with many topics:
• Environment
• Oceans
• Looking after our planet
• Pollution
This 30 x 1 hour English Scheme of Work is written for Years 3 and 4 (age 7-9). All Learning Intentions come from the National Curriculum for Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation for Lower Key Stage 2.
During this unit, the children have three extended writing tasks:
• Narrative Writing
● Explanation Text
● Persuasion Text
Many grammar objectives are also covered throughout the scheme. These include single and plural apostrophes, expanded noun phrases, direct speech, conjunctions of time, causal conjunctions, adverbials of time, fronted adverbials and present tense.
And there is more! In addition to this, the scheme also covers many reading objectives, including performance poetry, character profiling using inference, using a dictionary, retrieving information from non-fiction and debating.
This scheme of work will save teachers a lot of time! Each resource you will need for the whole six weeks is provided within the scheme. This includes differentiated activities, research, posters for the Working Wall, handouts for the children, success criteria checklists and high-quality written examples of extended writing expectations. Finally, all resource illustrations are hand-drawn and bespoke teaching videos are used to engage the children further.
This is WEEK 1 of a 6 week scheme of work which has been centred around ‘Breaker’ by Annemarie Allan. It tells the story of twins, Tom and Beth, who have recently moved to a coastal town where a tanker has collided with a rock, leaving it at risk of creating a huge oil spill! The twins befriend a rather intriguing character – a Professor – who leads them to become involved within interesting environmental adventures throughout the text. This 30 x 1 hour English Scheme of Work is written for Years 5 and 6. All Learning Intentions come from the National Curriculum for Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation for Upper Key Stage 2.
During this unit, the children have three extended writing tasks:
• News Report
• Narrative Writing
• Persuasion Text
Many grammar objectives are also covered throughout the scheme in engaging and informative ways. These include expanded noun phrases, direct and indirect speech, modal verbs, perfect form of verbs, devices to build cohesion, selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary, as well as identifying spelling and punctuation errors.
In addition to this, the scheme also covers many of the Years 5 and 6 reading objectives, including drawing inferences, predicting, summarising, identifying how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning and exploring the meaning of words in context.
This scheme will save teachers a lot of planning and preparation time! Every single resource you will need for the whole six weeks is provided within the scheme. This includes differentiated activities, research sheets for the children, posters for the Working Wall, handouts for the children, success criteria checklists and high-quality written examples of the extended writing expectations. Finally, all resource illustrations are hand-drawn, and the scheme also includes bespoke teaching videos to engage the children.
Annemarie Allen also provides virtual author visits via the Cranachan Publishing website.
The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website.
Week 1 from the full scheme of work described here:
This is the first week from a full scheme of work for Upper Key Stage 2 children comprises of 60 x 1 hour English lesson plans and ALL resources (differentiated) for a 12 week unit centered around ‘Journey to the River Sea’ by Eva Ibbotson. The unit covers non-chronological report writing (based on the Amazon Rainforest); biography writing, poetry and persuasive writing. As well as four rich writing opportunities (non-chronological report writing, biography writing, poetry and persuasive writing) the unit covers many punctuation and grammar aspects through bespoke teaching videos and teaching slides. The unit covers word classes, prepositions, relative clauses, determiners, cohesion, subject and verb agreement, perfect form of verbs and irregular verbs. The English unit has strong links with PSHCE as it explores the themes of prejudice and discrimination in ‘Journey to the River Sea’ as well as learning that personal behaviours can affect other people.